If you have not signed yet but think this is worthy of a vote, please contact us at info@fairwages.org or 707-442-7465 and we will do our best to get your signature. EVERY SIGNATURE COUNTS! The Eureka Fair Wage Act is a People’s Initiative to raise the minimum wage to $12.00 an hour for large employers in the city of Eureka.

If you can volunteer in some way or assist in some way in this final week of the signature drive please contact us. Assuming that we make the ballot we will have several more months of intense campaigning ahead of us. WE COULD USE YOUR SUPPORT.

Thank you!

have a peaceful day,

Bill

~please forward to Eureka voters!~

Minimum Wage Factoids

62% of all Minimum Wage Workers are Women

“In 2011 more than 62 percent of minimum-wage workers were women compared to just 38 percent of male minimum-wage workers. Slightly more than 2.5 million women earn the minimum wage or less, while approximately 1.5 million men do. This imbalance is even more drastic once you consider that women were just 46.9 percent of all employed workers in 2011.”

In 1968 an hour’s pay at minimum wage ( $1.60) would buy almost 5 gallons of gasoline (@ $0.33/ gal.) but today in Eureka an hour’s minimum wage ($8.00) will buy a little less than 2 gallons of gasoline (@ $4.37 per gallon.)

If the minimum wage had been increased at the same rate as the price of gas, the minimum wage would be over $21.00 per hour today.

In 2010, our nation’s economy was growing, but most Americans didn’t feel it because 93 percent of the income growth went to the richest 1 percent. The bottom 90 percent of Americans got none. It sure wasn’t always like that. Between 1938, when the federal minimum wage was first enacted, and 1968, when it peaked in value, the bottom 90 percent of households shared 69 percent of the nation’s income growth. The middle class was able to grow.

This June, a Zogby Analytics survey of likely voters found seven out of 10 supporting a raise above $10 an hour (including 54 percent of Republicans). Notably, 71 percent of young people (18 to 23 years old) favored it. Likewise, last November’s “American Values Survey” by the Public Religion Research Institute showed two-thirds of Americans in favor of a $10-per-hour minimum.